


No Matter Where You Go (Or Who You May Become)

by blackorchids



Category: Girl Meets World
Genre: 5 Times, 5+1 Things, F/M, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Mother-Son Relationship, Motherhood, Oblivious, POV Outsider, Season 1 Compatible, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-29 16:39:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12634971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackorchids/pseuds/blackorchids
Summary: Madison Friar loves her son more than anything else in the world, but he really can be quite dense, actually.Or;Five times Lucas' mom doesn't understand why her son isn't dating Maya, and one time she's hopeful that he's going to start.





	No Matter Where You Go (Or Who You May Become)

**Author's Note:**

> title from the song _I'll Always Be Your Mom_ by Aimee Zimmermann
> 
> like the tags say, this is season-1 compatible, and does contain some minor spoilers for that season, but, really, if you haven't seen season 1 yet, why are you even here??

Madison Friar sighs when her son comes in through the front door, tossing his backpack on a barstool and rushing to his bedroom without much more than a cursory _hi, ma_. His door closes loudly without being slammed, because even though his father’s not in town, habits stemming from fear are the hardest to break.

She knows he hadn’t wanted to move, but she hadn’t been able to take the humiliation of everyone in their neighborhood giving her the pitying looks when it had come out that Hank had been cheating, and that, coinciding with Lucas’ expulsion had seemed as good a time as any to get out of dodge.

Her Lucas was a good boy—he’d have gone with her even if he hadn’t needed to. He was still a teenager, and he was still upset about it, though.

She edges towards his bedroom door, half a dozen aimless conversation starters already bouncing around in her head when she hears him on the phone, more animated than he’d been all week.

“—huge, Zay, but everyone seems like they know where they’re headed and how to get there. I took the subway to school this morning, and I met this girl—”

Madison pulls her head away from the door and can’t help a little smirk. She wasn’t much a fan of the age old phrase _boys will be boys_ , but she supposed if there was anything to get her boy back to his happy self, it would be meeting a pretty girl on the train.

She hears him talk a little more, about his weird history teacher, and campus, and the hotdog he’d had on his way home, and backs away for good, turning around and heading back to the kitchen.

Tonight seems like a pizza night.

*

A couple weeks later, Lucas comes through the front door with a blonde girl trailing behind him, talking about how he’d better not let their fake business down.

Her son is smiling indulgently when the pair of them turn the corner and spot her, and he doesn’t seem to notice when the girl snaps her mouth shut and swallows, adjusting her stance very subtly to try and look more respectable.

“Ma, this is Maya, we’re partners in history class,” Lucas is saying, oblivious. “We’ve got to make muffins and sell them.”

“I hope you don’t mind us using your kitchen,” the girl—Maya—cuts in, fidgeting with the short hem of her shorts. “We’d have used mine, but—the landlord hasn’t come down to fix our oven yet.” The excuse is delivered clumsily, but Madison can’t quite decide why that had sounded like a lie, so she just smiles as graciously as she knows how.

“I hope y’all are planning on using healthy ingredients for these,” she says instead, and refrains from rolling her eyes at the dumbfounded expression on her son’s face. “Let me get out your mimi’s recipe, Lucas, and make sure we’ve got everything.”

They do, fortunately, and Madison talks them through why using applesauce is a healthy and tasty substitute for butter and oils when making muffins, explains why oat flour is better for the digestive system, pretends to have a call when she’s done so she can sit in sitting room and listen to the pair of them bicker back and forth about the order things should go in and how much batter should be in each muffin cup.

Maya leaves when it’s dark out and Madison makes noises about her staying for dinner, gives an unconvincing excuse when she says her mother is waiting. Madison sends her home with a dozen muffins for her, tells her Lucas’ll bring in the ones needed for their school project in the morning, smiles again when the girl thanks her quietly but sincerely.

In the kitchen, Lucas is washing the dishes, smiling a little aimlessly as he shakes his head at some pop song playing on the station Maya had picked. She tells her boy that she’ll handle the rest of them, and to go and wash up and get some of his homework done, decides on making the pair of them chicken and vegetables for dinner and goes into the hallway to knock on his door and get him to come out.

He’s on his phone when she’s about to knock, and so she waits, feeling guilty all the while about eavesdropping, but not guilty enough to stop. Lucas isn’t saying anything that seems private, anyway, talking to one of his friends about school and the muffins. There’s a pause on his part for a long time, before he grudgingly says _Maya_ in response to some unheard question. Another, shorter pause, and then her son is groaning with exasperation, so she knocks and he gives a rushed goodbye, looking a little relieved when he pokes his head out and follows her to the kitchen bar.

Madison so wants to ask about the girl, pester her son about what she’s like and whether they’re good friends, but she knows he’ll clam up if she does, so, instead, she asks more about this business project they’re doing, coaxes information out of him with the ease that comes with experience, doesn’t smile too knowingly when her boy gets a little starry-eyed when telling a story about Maya being disruptive and amazing.

*

Madison is in the kitchen, practicing candying apples so that the ones she hands out on Halloween are perfect, when Lucas comes in, setting his bag on the small sofa in their little sitting room before coming over to the kitchen to sit on a bar stool and watch her, his head propped up by his hands.

He looks thoughtful, when she looks up from her work to study his expression for a minute. Thoughtful and frustrated in equal measures.

“Farkle had a bully,” Lucas says in a rush after she’s finished with half a dozen apples. He’s eyeing them, so at least she knows one person who won’t be complaining about their odd shape. “Riley came up with this idea where we put our biggest flaw on our forehead and try to accept it about ourselves.”

Madison had liked most of Lucas’ friends back in Texas, and had considered Zay to be almost like a second son, but these new classmates of his seem to be teaching him what she’d never managed to articulate, all those years under Hank’s thumb.

New York has been kind to them both, even though her son looks a little tired around the eyes and his forehead has the ghost impression of what had likely read _Mr. Perfect_ a few hours earlier. She’s heard talk, and she knows her son well.

“Flaws give people character,” Madison tells her son, like she doesn’t have failed marriage written in black over her heart. “Learning to accept them and maybe even overcoming them is what makes people who they are, but no one can be without flaws, because there’s always room for improvement.”

It doesn’t sound exactly like how she wanted it to, but she thinks it’s a helluva lot better than anything Lucas’ father has ever said to him. In anycase, he doesn’t seem too concerned about himself, his eyebrows furrowed and his mouth tight like he’s trying to work out a problem.

“How do you help a person who says they’re broken?” he asks, fiddling with the little tubes of food coloring on the countertop. He sounds casual, and Madison knows better than to meet his gaze.

“Folks sometimes like to fix themselves, baby,” she tells him, choosing her words carefully. She doesn’t know for sure who he’s thinking of, but she has a few guesses, and all of them are the sweet blonde girl who wears her insecurities like armor whenever she’s over. “All you can do then is lend them the strength to do so.”

“How can I be a good friend if I didn’t know these things about them?” Lucas asks, voice small enough that Madison wants to wrap her son up in Mimi’s quilt and keep him safe from the world.

“People gotta feel safe with you first, before they share the deepest parts of themselves.” Lucas opens his mouth and she already knows his mind’s on what happened in Texas, so she cuts him off before he can start, rounding the tiny peninsula so she can hug him, letting him press his face into her side for a few minutes before he recovers and pulls away. “They need to feel like they can count on you.”

 _My sweet boy_ , Madison thinks, when he nods his head determinedly. She gives him a lumpy candied apple before he can get too embarrassed.

*

When Lucas tells her he’s running for class president, Madison thinks, for what must be the millionth time, that moving to New York has saved her boy. He’s excited about it, a little competitive, even though he’s fretting about running against three of his friends.

“Riley and Farkle are also running,” he tells her as she helps him with his posters and speech. He must catch the expression on her face, because he laughs a little and shakes his head _fondly_ , because her boy is in love. “Maya’s running Riley’s campaign—those two are a package deal.”

He gets home a couple days later, looking annoyed and contemplative all at once. “Farkle launched a smear campaign against Riley and me,” is all he says, throwing his bag on the countertop and rooting around in the fridge for sandwich fixings. “I think Riley and Maya are going to fight back, and that I’m going to get dragged down too.”

“That doesn’t sound like them,” Madison says, though she can’t honestly say she’s too surprised that Lucas’ little friend Farkle fights dirty, or that Maya has convinced Riley that they have to fight back.

“It is and it isn’t,” Lucas says succinctly, taking a ginormous bite of his sandwich and rolling his eyes when she wrinkles her nose. He finishes chewing before continuing, though, so her son hasn’t been eliminated by teenage angst yet. “Farkle’s the most competitive, but Maya will do anything to anyone once the first shot is fired. She heard me talking on the phone to dad, about how I didn’t want to move.”

“You’re still unhappy, baby?” she asks him and he sighs, leaning forward against the counter, half the sandwich already gone.

“I love it here, usually,” Lucas says after a minute. “But I miss the house and my friends in Texas too.” He shakes his head in frustration. “And now Maya’s gonna use it against me.”

 _Will she?_ Madison wants to ask, but he’s already stuffing the rest of his sandwich into his mouth and going into his room to pout in private, which is good, because it’s not five minutes later that she gets a phone call from an unsaved number.

And who else would be on the other end if it wasn’t Maya, asking for contact information from some of Lucas’ friends and swearing Madison to secrecy with none of her usual shyness.

*

Lucas gets home later than usual, explaining on his way to his room that he had to stop by the Matthews’ apartment to get Mr. Matthews’ permission to take _Riley_ out on a date.

“I beg your pardon?” Madison can’t help but say, her tone just shy of sharp. Lucas pauses in flipping through his ironed shirts in the tiny closet his bedroom has to give her a curious look.

“What-what?” he asks, like he’s lost all of his southern roots already, when she knows that’s not the case, since he constantly complains about Maya making fun of him whenever he slips up.

“You’re taking _Riley_ out on a date?” Madison asks, because she can’t not, at this point. Is her son actually leading this poor girl on?

“Yeah, ma,” he says, rolling his eyes at her like the teenager he is. “‘s what I said, yeah?”

“Riley.”

Lucas looks at her for real this time, furrowing his brows at her expression. “Why not Riley? I like Riley. _You_ like Riley.”

“I love Riley,” Madison says, because she does, truly, have a giant soft spot for that cherub of a girl. “What about Maya?”

“She’s going out with Farkle,” Lucas says, laughing a little even as he starts to change into a nice dark blue shirt. He’s looking for his good jeans when he notices her still standing there, a little shell-shocked. “You alright, ma?”

“Just fine, Lucas,” Madison says, because there’s not much else to say. If he says he likes Riley, she’s got to trust him and hope that his date with Riley goes well.

When he comes out of his bedroom a few minutes later, the front ends of his hair prodded upwards and shellacked into submission, she’s overcome with a different kind of emotion. “You look so grown, baby,” she says, straightening out his shirt a little and brushing invisible dust off of his shoulders. He lets her, because he can hear the tremor in her voice as well as she can, and he’s terrified she’ll start to tear up. Rightly so, because Madison can feel her eyes stinging.

“Have fun tonight,” she says when she thinks she’s got her voice under control. “You treat that girl right, right?” The double message is obvious to him, because he looks a little sad for a minute, looking down at her, because her boy can’t stop growing for a second. She knows he’s nothing like Hank, though, so she’s not worried a stitch, but he nods very seriously anyway.

“I’ll see you when you get back,” she tells him, and lets him go, a kiss pressed to her cheek as he passes.

*

Madison Friar sighs when her son comes in through the front door, tossing his backpack on a barstool and rushing to his bedroom without much more than a cursory _hi, ma_. His door slams, because New York has been good to them both, and he’d been just as relieved as she had when the divorce papers finally went through.

She thinks about telling him that he needs to shower after a weekend away camping at some ski lodge that had had Cory and Topanga looking at each other uneasily, but she figures she can wait a little while to see if he’ll cool off and tell her what’s happened, since something so clearly has.

She’s barely started to pick through the bag of dirty laundry, having already decided to wash it separately from the rest of the clothes on account of the mud and general boy stench, when the front door of their tiny apartment bursts open once more.

“Hi, Ms. Vaughnn,” Maya says quickly, remembering to use Madison’s maiden name a lot easier than anyone else Madison speaks to. “I hope you don’t mind but I’m here to _murder your son_.”

Madison’s not worried, though Maya looks pissed rightly off. She stalks past the living room and pounds on Lucas’ bedroom door, scoffing loudly at his slightly muffled shout of _go away!_ and yanking out a wallet from her back pocket, removing her student ID card from inside and jimmying the lock with impressive finesse.

“ _Josh_?” She shouts disbelievingly before the door is even halfway open, already marching through, messy braids whipping behind her and almost getting caught when she closes the door after herself. “You think I’m in love with _Josh_?!”

The door doesn’t manage to close before Lucas’ tired _go away, Maya_ , though, so Madison decides to wait a little while before she starts the washing machine. It’s quite loud, and she wouldn’t want to disrupt Maya giving her idiot son a well-deserved telling-off, from the sounds of it.

There’s some incomprehensible back and forth and then Maya’s voice reaches ultrasonic levels of pitch and Madison hopes their neighbors aren’t home.

“I could maybe understand why you would believe something _so incomprehensibly stupid_ if I didn’t know you were actually kind of intelligent, sometimes!” Maya shouts, and that’s when Lucas starts shouting too.

“It’s not like I haven’t heard of nothing else for the past three years, Maya!” He retorts angrily, and Madison can picture him crossing his arms tightly, all these years and still untrusting of his own temper, even though Maya clearly has never worried, since the floor creaks with the sound of her pacing. “Uncle Boing this and Riley’s Yummy Uncle that and _oh, is Joooooosh going to be coming, Riles_?” the clearly mocking falsetto her son adopts is pretty insulting, but the way her son draws out Josh’ name has Madison wincing.

“‘Even though this just happened, you know there are some moments you’re gonna remember forever!’” Maya shouts, her own voice mocking and mean. “And everything you’ve ever said after that, about _Riley_ , my best friend, my _sister_ , and you’re getting upset about a _crush_ I had on a cute boy?! What happened to _I could never hurt you, Maya_ , what happened to detention and the campfire and ha-fucking-hurr?”

Maya’s voice cracks a little there at the end, and Madison has to strain a little to hear her son, much quieter, groan and say, a little pleadingly, “ _Maya_.”

“It’s okay if you don’t want to date me, Lucas,” Maya finally says, sounding tight and controlled. “But don’t make it about anyone but you and me.”

Madison waits just long enough to hear her son start apologizing and reassuring in equal measure, and then she starts the load.

**Author's Note:**

> honestly fuck that camping episode
> 
> come leave a prompt on my tumblr @ [rosalinesbenvolio](http://www.rosalinesbenvolio.tumblr.com)!!


End file.
